The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, June 17, 2016

Left’s false narrative ignores clear evidence of killer’s intent.

The Left is attempting to paint the Orlando massacre as primarily an attack on the gay community, made possible by easy access to guns. That is, according to the Left’s narrative, homophobia and gun violence are the ingredients that lit the fuse. Typical of this distorted way of thinking was the New York Times lead editorial on June 14th, which claimed the United States was being “terrorized again – and again, and again, and again – by the uniquely deadly combination of twisted hatred and weapons of mass destruction as easily available as cough medicine.”This gross oversimplification plays down the role of ISIS-inspired jihad in fueling the massacre. The shooter, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to ISIS, drawing on its strict interpretation of sharia law to justify his rampage.Some have attributed Mateen’s choice of a gay nightclub as his target to self-loathing for his own possible homosexual tendencies. However, that would not explain why he and his wife cased a Disney theme park in April as a possible location for his attack. Disney reportedly informed the FBI of what their surveillance had picked up, to no avail. Is it just a coincidence that, last January, a Muslim with two handguns and copy of the Koran was arrested at Disneyland Paris? More likely, it demonstrates how jihadists are targeting soft targets popular with tourists for maximum effect, especially those associated with “decadent” Western consumerism. Moreover, there is the timing of Mateen’s attack. It came just three days after it was revealed that a pro-Isis group had issued a threat against U.S. civilians, including specifically in Florida. And last month, an ISIS spokesman called for lone wolf attacks by its sympathizers in Europe and the U.S. during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan “to win the great award of martyrdom.” Ramadan started a week before Mateen’s attack. If, as has been reported, Mateen had been a frequent visitor to the nightclub for whatever reason, he evidently skipped multiple opportunities to conduct his killing spree and waited for the start of Ramadan, as ISIS leaders had instructed.Mateen was responding to the same radical Islamic ideology that led two illegal immigrants from Tunisia, who were ISIS followers, to stab a 26-year-old transgender man in Brussels the day before the Orlando attack. And it was the same radical Islamic ideology that led a man claiming allegiance to ISIS to stab a police official and his companion to death in France a day after the Orlando attack, while repeating ISIS’s call to turn the Euro 2016 football tournament being held in France into "a graveyard."The common denominator of these attacks, along with the suicide bombings and shootings in Paris and Brussels, the bombings at the Boston Marathon, the massacres in Fort Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, and so many more around the globe, is not homophobia. It is not random gun violence. It is the jihadist ideology of radical Islam, and the hatred for our way of life that inspires violence to destroy it.Mateen was not self-radicalized in a vacuum. Family members, including his wife, who has admitted to knowing about his murderous plans beforehand and even helping him scout possible sites for his assault, protected him. His pro-Taliban father reportedly helped run a radical mosque, the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, which Mateen was said to have regularly attended. He prayed there just 36 hours before he began his slaughter at the Orlando nightclub.Mateen’s mosque has been described by local law enforcement officials as a “breeding ground” for terrorists. The first American to carry out a suicide attack in Syria, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, had attended the mosque, sparking the FBI’s interest in 2014 when it investigated a possible link between Mateen and the suicide bomber. The result of the investigation was inconclusive at the time. So was an investigation that the FBI had conducted of Mateen a year earlier, stemming from terrorist threats he had allegedly made at work. The FBI closed that investigation after 10 months because they concluded that Mateen was simply responding to what he felt was Islamophobia being displayed by his co-workers. His 2011 and 2012 trips to Saudi Arabia, which is home to the virulent Wahhabi strain of Islam in which al Qaeda and ISIS have their ideological roots, apparently raised no eyebrows at the FBI. We are supposed to believe that Mateen’s trips were innocent pilgrimages. Clearly, the FBI dropped the ball. Political correctness took priority over public safety. Also disturbing is a claim by newly retired Department of Homeland Security agent Philip Haney about his work that could have tied the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce to a broader jihadist network. It had been squelched by Obama administration officials. “This case struck me as very similar to the San Bernardino shooting case,” Haney told WND, commenting on the Orlando mass shootings. “I suspected that they were both part of a national and international network of organizations.”Connecting the dots is a critical part of remaining a step ahead of the jihadists, according to Haney, which the FBI failed to do in this case. “As long as we mislead ourselves with a false narrative about the threat we face, we’re never going to come to the place where we can develop a counter-strategy to it,” he said.The Left, including President Obama and Hillary Clinton, are exploiting the Orlando tragedy to push their false narrative that Americans themselves are somehow at least partly at fault for what happened. In its June 15th lead editorial “The Threat to Gay Americans,” the New York Times said that the “49 people killed in Orlando” were “the casualties of a society where hate has deep roots,” alluding to alleged anti-gay bigotry especially within the Republican Party.To the contrary, the people killed and severely wounded in Orlando were the casualties of global jihad. They were targets of an Islamic supremacist ideology of hate against all of us who believe in freedom, respect and human dignity for every individual.

The hate preachers and terrorists running wild in our midst.

The home of the "Happiest Place on Earth" has been breeding killer jihadists and Muslim zealots for years.

Omar Mateen, the cold-blooded mass murderer who gunned down 49 people
at an Orlando gay nightclub and wounded 53 more before police took him
out late Sunday, may have worked alone. But he operated in the larger
context of a teeming, terror-coddling paradise.

While tourists from around the world soak up sunshine and dreams at Disney World, Islamic extremism festers around them.

Schools: The Muslim Students Association, founded by the radical
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood whose stated purpose is to wage "grand
jihad" on America, is active at the publicly funded University of
Central Florida in Orlando. The group defiantly brought un-indicted
terror co-conspirator Siraj Wahhaj to campus. He's the black Muslim
convert and inflammatory imam tied by federal prosecutors to the 1993
World Trade Center bombing and New York City landmarks bombing plots.

Wahhaj served as a character witness for convicted terror mastermind
Omar Abdel Rahman (the Blind Sheik), called for replacement of America's
"constitutional government with a caliphate" and roots for our nation
to "crumble" so Muslims can take over. UCF funded a Muslims "da'wa"
(conversion) seminar and with an endowment by the Saudi-supported
International Institute of Islamic Thought sought to create an Islamic
Studies chair to "help the Ummah regain its intellectual and cultural
identity and re-affirm its presence as a dynamic civilization."

The IIIT, also a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, donated at least
$50,000 to a "think tank" run by Sami al-Arian that served as a front
group for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While al-Arian, a Muslim
Brotherhood member dating back to the 1980s, served as a computer
science professor at Tampa's University of South Florida, he toured the
country raising money for terrorism overseas. Investigative reporters
and the feds caught al-Arian on tape inciting his attendees against,
America, Israel "and their allies until death." The left-wing academic
pleaded guilty to a terror-fundraising conspiracy charge in 2006.

Al-Arian brought Palestinian-born Ramadan Shalah to teach at USF and
head his "think tank" for a spell. Shalah left the school in 1995 and
resurfaced as head of Syria's Islamic Jihad. He remains one of the FBI's
most wanted indicted terrorist fugitives.

Apologist
officials at USF, first exposed by counter-jihad researcher Steve
Emerson as America's "Jihad U," turned a blind eye to the terror helpers
among them.

Mosques: Mateen's homicidal hatred for gays
didn't exist in a vacuum. Mateen's neighborhood mosque in nearby Fort
Pierce, Florida, was also the house of worship of Moner Abu-Salha, an
American jihad recruiter and suicide bomber who blew himself up in Syria
last year. The Palm Beach Post reported this week that Abu-Salha had
posted videos of an imam's death-to-gays rant on Facebook.

Marcus Dwayne Robertson (a.k.a. Abu Taubah), a former U.S. Marine
turned career criminal and bodyguard to the Blind Sheik, headed another
mosque, Masjid Al-Ihsaam, in Orlando. He also founded the Orlando-based
Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary in 2008 and railed against gays
and non-Muslims. Mateen was enrolled in Taubah's course.

Just
weeks before the Pulse nightclub massacre, another Orlando mosque, the
Husseini Islamic Center, hosted a guest imam who had preached that "gays
must die" and that Muslims should not "be embarrassed about this ...
let's get rid of them now."

Also in Orlando, the al-Rahman
mosque led by Imam Muhammad Musri made headlines in 2010 after holding a
fundraiser for the terrorist group Hamas.

In Tampa, Sami
al-Arian founded the al-Qassam mosque named after an infamous Syrian
terrorist. Last fall, the mosque — owned by the North American Islamic
Trust, an un-indicted terror co-conspiracy organization — invited an
exiled Muslim Brotherhood instigator and Hamas cheerleader to speak.

In South Florida, the Darul Uloom Institute mosque in Pembroke Pines
counted al-Qaida jihad pilot Adnan el-Shukrijumah (allegedly killed in a
raid in Waziristan by the Pakistan military in 2014) and convicted
jihadist Imran Mandhai — who plotted with fellow mosque attendees Hakki
Aksoy and Shueyb Jokhan to blow up power stations, synagogues and a
National Guard armory — among its worshipers.

Shukrijumah's
brother still lives in Broward County near the Darul Uloom mosque and
has posted social media videos condemning "moderate" Muslims, blaming
9/11 on Jews and promoting the caliphate. Darul Uloom's imam is a
gay-bashing, Christian-bashing, Jew-bashing bigot who has publicly
stated that at least one of the 9/11 hijackers prayed at his mosque.

Jails: Florida's prisons and penitentiaries are unfettered cesspools
for jihad radicalization and recruitment. Convicted al-Qaida dirty bomb
plotter Jose Padilla (a.k.a. Abdullah al Mujahir) was introduced to
Islam while serving time for an armed road rage incident in Sunrise,
Florida. The above-named Abu Taubah radicalized nearly 40 fellow inmates
while behind bars on a weapons conviction. He was freed last summer by
U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell after time served despite
prosecutors' pleas to add 10 years to his sentence based on enhanced
terror charges.

Michelle MalkinSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263200/florida-americas-jihad-playground-michelle-malkin Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The overwhelming number of questions from the audience concerned what
several people referred to as an anti-Israel bias in the schools’
curricula. Many called on the mayor to make the curricula transparent by
having it posted online.

forum on anti-Semitism in Newtown

Penny Schwartz/JTA

JTA - Amid a spike in anti-Semitic activity across New England,
Jewish and Israeli residents met with the mayor of Newton,
Massachusetts, to express their concern about incidents in the Boston
suburb’s school system.

More than 150 people attended the standing-room-only community forum with Newton Mayor Setti Warren Tuesday evening.

The meeting followed the revelation in late February of several acts
of anti-Semitic vandalism at a middle school that had gone unreported.
Those reports jarred the city, as did stories about Catholic high school
students who chanted anti-Semitic slogans during a game against Newton
North High School.

Since the start of 2016, there have been 56 anti-Semitic incidents in
various states in New England, according to the New England
Anti-Defamation League. In all of last year, there were 61.

“The scourge of anti-Semitism is one of the most important issues
facing the city,” Warren said in his opening remarks at the public
forum.

The forum was hosted by the Israel American Council at its regional
office in Newton, home to a large Jewish population. Some 30,000 Israeli
Americans reportedly live in the Boston area. The event was cosponsored
with the New England ADL, the Jewish Community Relations Council of
Greater Boston and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston.

Warren, who traveled to Israel three times in the past four years —
including on a trade mission with former Massachusetts Gov. Deval
Patrick — noted the strong economic ties between the city and Israel and
said he wants to strengthen them. Newton is becoming a magnet for
Israeli-founded companies. Some 200 companies brought in $9.3 billion to
the state’s economy, according to a report issued last week.

“One concern is the BDS movement,” Warren said, referring to the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israeli. “It’s
working at cross purposes to establishing partnerships with the Israeli
business community.”

Warren also responded positively to a suggestion by Robert Trestan,
ADL’s New England regional director, for Newton to partner with a sister
city in Israel

The high turnout for the forum was a sign of community concern, said
Ilan Segev, co-chair of the Boston Israel American Council. In addition
to the Israeli and Israeli-American attendees, many in the audience were
Jews from Newton, heavily Jewish Brookline and other nearby towns.
Segev urged those in attendance not to be silent.

The overwhelming number of questions from the audience concerned what
several people referred to as an anti-Israel bias in the schools’
curricula. Many called on the mayor to make the curricula transparent by
having it posted online.

“I’m less worried about swastikas. What scares me is what goes on in
broad daylight and what happens in the schoolroom,” said Charles Jacobs,
head of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a group which monitors
extremism among American Muslim leaders. Jacobs, who has campaigned for
years against city school textbooks that he sees as pro-Palestinian and
anti-Semitic, confronted Warren at an April 7 public forum in the city.

At Tuesday’s less contentious meeting, Jacobs and several current and
former parents from the schools said anti-Israel activity is the new
anti-Semitism.

Among other city responses to the incidents, Warren said he has
initiated discussions to reintroduce curriculum from Facing History and
Ourselves, a Boston-based international educational organization that
focuses on the Holocaust and genocide. Warren urged people to bring
specific examples of problematic curriculum directly to his attention.

The Israeli-American community has a heightened awareness of
anti-Semitism, according to Na’ama Ore, the Israel American Council’s
regional director, whose children attend the public schools in
Brookline.

“As leaders in the community and as an organization, we have to take action and come together like we did tonight,” she told JTA.JTASource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213711#.V2K4U6Kzddt Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Websites proposed several possible reasons for
the fighting between the two allies

In
the recent hours, there have been increasing reports in the Arab media and on
social networks that intense battles are taking place between Hizbullah forces and
Syrian regime forces in the rural area north of Aleppo. Confirmation of the reports
can be found in Facebook posts by regime supporters who blamed Hizbullah for
the fighting and rebuked the organization, saying it that it had come to help
the Syrian army, not control it. Websites proposed several possible reasons for
the fighting between the two allies: Hizbullah's insistence on running battles
on its own, without coordinating with regime forces; Hizbullah's opposition to
the ceasefire in Aleppo, which Russia announced early this morning with the
regime's consent; and anger on the part of Hizbullah that regime forces had failed
to defend military positions that Hizbullah had won in very costly battles.

The following is a review of reports on the fighting
between Syrian regime forces and Hizbullah:

At 02:30 am on June 16, 2016, the
Lebanese website Janoubia, which is known for its opposition to Hizbullah, cited
"Syrian sources" in a report stating that "real battles are
taking place in Tel Al-Maysat and Al-Bureij in the Aleppo area between Assad's
army and Hizbullah troops," and that "the Syrian air force bombed
Hizbullah positions on three separate occasions." According to the sources,
"this is not the first clash [between the sides] in the recent days,"
and "the reason for the conflict is the Assad's army rapid withdrawal from
positions that Hizbullah had won in very costly battles." The report stated
further that both sides have sustained dozens of losses in the fighting. Several
hours later, the site reported that there had been heavy fighting between the
sides since 01:30 that night in the region of the Shi'ite villages Nubl and
Al-Zaharaa north of Aleppo, and that seven regime soldiers and officers had
been killed. [1]

The oppositionist Syrian website
"Shaam" reported under the heading "Yesterday's Friend Is
Today's Enemy" that "intense fighting involving heavy weapons and
artillery" had started during the night between Hizbullah and Assad forces
along several routes in the rural area north of Aleppo, and that a major road
in that area had been blocked. The report added that Russian jets had bombed
Hizbullah positions in the area, having received the coordinates from the Assad
forces, and that dozens of Hizbullah troops were killed and injured in these
air strikes. According to the website, battles also broke out south of Aleppo
between the Iraqi Al-Nujaba militia and Hizbullah on the one hand, and regime
forces on the other.

The website
noted that the clashes started as brawls and escalated into gunfights and
eventually into battles involving heavy weapons and even jets, adding that
officials from both sides intervened to stop the hostilities.[2]

Several possible reasons for the schism
between Hizbullah and the regime forces were proposed. The Syrian website
Aletihadpress.com, which describes itself as "neutral," reported that
conflict had erupted in the town of Al-Haylan in the northern rural area of
Aleppo after Hizbullah members refused to obey the orders of the liaison
officer and insisted on running the battle independently of the regime forces.
In response, regime forces fired at Hizbullah troops, and the skirmish
escalated into an artillery exchange. The website noted that Hizbullah's position
in the area had also been bombed from the air, but it was unclear whether by
Syrian or Russian jets.[3]

The Syrian
oppositionist website Orient News cited sources as saying that the reason for
the fighting may be Hizbullah's opposition to the ceasefire in Aleppo that Russia
had unexpectedly announced several hours after midnight with the regime's
consent.[4] Another speculation
pointed to Hizbullah's complaints about incompetence on the part of the Syrian
army, namely its claims that regime forces had failed to defend positions that
Hizbullah had won with great difficulty north of Aleppo, and had also failed to
assist Hizbullah forces south of the city.[5]

Regime Journalist On Facebook: Hizbullah
Came To Help Us, Not Control Us

Evidence of the schism between
regime and Hizbullah forces could be seen in comments made on Facebook by
Syrian journalist and former MP Sharif Shhade. He wrote: "National
sovereignty is a red line. The decision always rests with the Syrian [military]
brass. We must quickly resolve any disagreement with the assisting forces,
since there is no room for conflict at this stage. Sons of Hizbullah, you have
come to help us, not to control us. Please rethink your position."[6]

Kinana
Allouche, a pro-regime Syrian journalist, held Hizbullah responsible for the
incident. She wrote on her Facebook page: "This afternoon, Hizbullah
elements attacked the men of resistance in Nubl and Al-Zaharaa as well as
officers in the Syrian Arab army. Intense clashes erupted as a result. This is
a message from a Syrian citizen to all the forces assisting the Syrian Arab
army: The Syrian Arab army is the pride of the ummah. You are here to assist it
against terrorism and not to control it. The Syrian Arab army stood by you in
your war against Israel. Do not toy with us. Stop doing harm."[7]

A similar debate and vote is scheduled to take place in the Swiss
Parliament on Friday, June 17. The Dutch and Swiss governments, along
with Sweden and Denmark, provide $17 million to this framework over
three years ending in 2016. As documented in NGO Monitor research reports,
this money is used for core funding to 24 NGOs, including many of the
leaders of BDS and lawfare campaigns, such as Badil and Al Haq, and a
number of Israeli political NGOs.

In parallel, the British Parliament held a debate
this week on the government’s international aid activities, including
the distribution of funds by the Department for International
Development (DFID). In this debate, MPs cited NGO Monitor research
reports on this funding, calling on the government to stop diversion of
funds to anti-peace Israeli and Palestinian NGOs. Following the debate,
DFID officials announcement policy changes. In response, Sir Eric
Pickles, MP declared: “I welcome a shift in DFID’s funding toward
peaceful coexistence projects that better support a peace process, along
with the Minister’s agreement to look at alleged abuses of British aid
by particular Palestinian NGOs.”

In all three instances, the parliamentary debates, votes, and policy
changes followed recent briefings from NGO Monitor, based on our
research reports. The need for responsible policies regarding NGO
funding from Europe has been repeated by Israeli government officials,
diplomats, and members of the Knesset in their contacts with European
counterparts.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, stated: “These
changes and the requirement for close oversight, including the
involvement of parliament, mark fundamental changes in the way NGOs are
funded by these countries. The extreme secrecy in budgets for radical
NGOs, involving tens of millions of euros, opened the door for many
abuses, including BDS and other forms of demonization. We expect similar
steps in the European Union and other countries that are involved in
these activities. And by ending this irresponsible use of tax money, and
adopting guidelines like those recommended by NGO Monitor, the need for
additional Israeli NGO transparency legislation will also end.”NGO MonitorSource: http://www.ngo-monitor.org/press-releases/ngo-monitor-triggers-major-changes-in-holland-uk-and-switzerland/ Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Existentialism teaches “What I do defines who I am.” And that is what is
at the heart of the transgender movement -- the search for autonomous
meaning in a universe that has no absolutes.

Recently, an Alaskan transgendered high school athlete
won honors in a female race at Alaska’s state track meet. The female
competitors, no doubt, were upset, one even saying that she doesn’t
think it is fair. A normal and reasonable response. It won’t be the
last, since, according to transathlete.com, thirty states allow for transgendered athletes to compete in competitions under the gender they identify with.

About two to three decades ago, it became the norm to discard sexual
difference in language, e.g., no longer was there a spokesman or
spokeswoman, but spokesperson was the term used; no longer are people
called actors or actresses, but both men and women are called actors.

We well remember how the transformation of Caitlyn Jenner was one of the
most reported-upon stories by a media that is fixated upon driving a
leftist agenda. Even before Caitlyn Jenner there was Laverne Cox. And
since 2014, Amazon’s "Transparent" has been a hit. As well, there is
Jazz Jennings. Furthermore, beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year,
kindergarten children in Washington State will be taught gender identity, with 3rd graders even being taught that they can choose their own gender. Then there is the New York City Human Rights Law which enforces the proper use of pronouns to address an individual.

Some of the roots of the current transgender rights movement can be
traced back to the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s when all societal
norms were breached. The truth at the bottom of this sad episode was not
liberation to love, but the ego wanting whatever it wanted -- full
liberation from any meaningful relationships, which will require
responsibility and restraints.

But the roots go even further back, and are found in post-modernism and
existentialism. Politics, as is often said, is downstream from culture.
But the culture is downstream from the academy, which is where bad ideas
take hold and are passed down to students, and through entertainment,
which influences society. To quote Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher,
“Let me make the songs of a nation, I do not care who makes its laws.”

But two of the main influencers of the current Left are Herbert Marcuse
and Michel Foucault. A leading member of the Frankfurt School, Marcuse’s
book Eros and Civilization (1965) became the bible of the New
Left. As a cultural Marxist, he saw the biggest challenge was replacing
the Reality Principle with the Pleasure Principle. This was the driving
force that propelled the Sexual Revolution. Happiness was the highest
ideal and anything goes.

Marcuse and the Frankfurt School also urged what is now called political
correctness. For them, in order to change society and culture, the
transgressive must become the norm and what is accepted and tolerated --
free speech, traditional customs, etc. -- must become unacceptable and
intolerable, and that they and their disciples would be the enforcers of
what is tolerable and accepted.

Michel Foucault believed that man had no epistemological consciousness,
i.e. there is no definition of man beyond his own subjective truth. At
the base of Foucault’s thinking is Relativism, i.e. there is no absolute
truth, therefore, there is no moral absolute that defines and guides a
society and, on the personal level, any person at all. We are all free
to choose our own subjective truths.

Foucault, along with Jacques Derrida, another proponent of
Deconstructionism, questioned fundamental conceptual distinctions, or
“oppositions”, in language and literary texts. When taken outside of its
original purpose, this mode of thought has been largely helpful in the
questioning of tradition and cultural norms.

But one of Foucault’s greatest contributions to how many people think,
especially on the Left, came from his thoughts on language. For him,
language should be freed from its subordination to ideas to become now
its own autonomous reality -- language is its own truth and speaks
nothing other than its own meaning. Words have no transcendental
meanings, no absolute meanings.

Another immense contribution from Foucault is Social Constructionism,
which, although did not begin with him, was greatly developed by his
work in this field. This teaches that “social constructs
or social constructions define meanings, notions, or connotations that
are assigned to objects and events in the environment and to people’s
notions of their relationships to and interactions with these objects.
In the domain of social constructionist thought, a social construct is
an idea or notion that appears to be natural and obvious to people who
accept it but may or may not represent reality, so it remains largely an
invention or artifice of a given society.”

Which brings us to questions of gender and sex. Foucault believed that
sexuality was a socially constructed concept ascribed onto
people/bodies. There was no definite male or female, but each person was
free to define himself or herself an identity. This is a natural result
of Deconstructionism. Thus, one feels free to choose whichever gender
(I prefer the term sex, which is more appropriate) one feels or identifies with.

This is the natural result of the long march towards radical
subjectivity. But if we look back throughout history, we can see the
linear progression that has brought us to this juncture. In the 17th
Century, there was Rationalism, which held sway over the academy with
its mathematical and rational certainty. But because there were other
facts of life in life like love and ethics, Empiricism developed with
its command over science and empiricists wanted to be sovereign over
everything. Then in the 1900s, Existentialism emerged onto the scene and
taught that passions were what mattered and we should express those
passions now.

Existentialism, still very influential, insists on individual existence,
the individual’s freedom and his ability to choose. There was no God,
so man was on his own in the universe and had to define himself.
Existentialism teaches “What I do defines who I am.” And that is what is
at the heart of the transgender movement -- the search for autonomous
meaning in a universe that has no absolutes. In this postmodern world
(some say it is a post-postmodern world), in which there are no
absolutes and truth is relative, there is no larger framework of meaning
to language or to our world. The individual seeks his own subjective
reality, in essence his own truth, i.e. something that gives him or her
meaning and an identity.Nigel AssamSource: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/the_roots_of_transgender_rage.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Iran complains to International Court over American Supreme Court’s ruling that it compensate families of terror attack victims.

Iran has filed a formal complaint with the International Court of
Justice over the American Supreme Court’s ruling that nearly $2 billion
in assets frozen in the United States will be recovered as compensation to families of victims of terrorist attacks linked to the Islamic Republic, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The Supreme Court ruled in April that the assets must be turned over
to American families of people killed in the 1983 bombing of a U.S.
Marine Corps barracks in Beirut and other attacks blamed on Iran.

Iran rejected the
Supreme Court ruling shortly after it was issued, calling it “a theft
of the assets and properties of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and saying
the ruling is "tantamount to ridiculing justice and law and it does not
create any right for the U.S. nationals."

The Iranian complaint was filed on Tuesday, President Hassan Rouhani
said at an "iftar" evening gathering in Tehran to break the Islamic
Ramadan fast.

"The government of the Islamic Republic of Iran officially complained
about America to the International Court of Justice for the
confiscation and theft of two billion dollars of the property of the
central bank," Rouhani said, according to Reuters, "and demanded the condemnation of Washington's anti-Iranian action and compensation for damages."

More than 1,000 plaintiffs in the case have accused Iran of providing
material support to its terrorist proxy Hezbollah, which was
responsible for the 1983 truck bomb attack that killed 241 U.S. service
personnel in Beirut.

They also sought compensation related to other attacks including the
1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19
American service personnel.

It remains unclear how Iran's complaint to the International Court of Justice may affect the payments.

"We shouldn't stay quiet in the face of this incident and we will
pursue this complaint until it reaches a result," Rouhani said,
according to Reuters.Ben ArielSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213709#.V2K5ZKKzddt Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

"Look, now there is the Islamophobia malady in the West ... [Its]
aim is to stop [the further spread of Islam]. But they will not be able
to succeed." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, June 4, 2016.

Turkey's President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and his fellow Islamists are keen admirers of the idea
that Muslim Turks capture lands belonging to other civilizations
because, in this mindset, "conquest" means the spread of Islam.

In Erdogan's narrative, Muslim Turks have never invaded foreign
lands by the force of the sword. What they did was just conquering
hearts. This is not even funny.

1071 is a very special year for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- and his Islamist ideologues. Erdogan often speaks about his "2071 targets," a reference to his vision of "Great Turkey," on the 1000th anniversary of a battle that paved the Turks' way into where they still live.

In 1071, the Seljuk Turks did not arrive in Anatolia from their
native Central Asian steppes with flowers in their hands. Instead they
were in full combat gear, fighting a series of wars against the
Christian Byzantine [Eastern Roman] Empire and featuring a newfound
Islamic zeal. The Battle of Manzikert in 1071 is widely seen as the
moment when the Byzantines lost the war against the Turks: before the
end of the century, the Turks were in control of the entire Anatolian
peninsula.

Another divine date for Erdogan is May 29, 1453. That day saw the
fall of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, after an
Ottoman army invaded what is today Istanbul, modern Turkey's biggest
city. The conquest of Constantinople was not a peaceful event either.
The city's siege lasted for 53 days and cost thousands of lives. The
Byzantine defeat left the Ottoman armies unchecked, clearing the way for
their advance into Christian Europe in the centuries to come. The long
and violent Ottoman march into Europe came to a halt in 1683, when the
Ottomans were defeated during the siege of Vienna. By then the Ottomans
were in control of north Africa, most parts of the Middle East and
central and eastern Europe, totaling 5.2 million square kilometers of
land.

On every May 29, the Turks, proud of being -- possibly -- the world's
only nation that celebrates the capture by the sword of their biggest
city from another civilization, take to the streets for grand
ceremonies. The 563th anniversary of the conquest was celebrated with a major event created by a team of 1,200 people. It saw a 563-man Mehter
concert [an Ottoman military band], a show by the Turkish Air Force
aerobatics team, special conquest celebrations, a fireworks display,
live broadcasts in six different languages and the world's largest 3D
mapping stage used to reenact the conquest.

There is more than enough evidence about the Turkish Islamists' "conquest-fetish." Turkey's leaders have too often spoken of "liberating Jerusalem and making the city the capital of an independent Palestine."

In September, then prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, another Islamist, said:

"By Allah's will, Jerusalem belongs to the Kurds, the
Turks, the Arabs, and to all Muslims. And as our forefathers fought side
by side at Gallipoli, and just as our forefathers went together to
liberate Jerusalem with Saladin, we will march together on the same path
[to liberate Jerusalem]."

Erdogan and his fellow Islamists are keen admirers of the idea that
Muslim Turks capture lands belonging to other civilizations because, in
this mindset, "conquest" means the spread of Islam. That is hardly
surprising: political Islam typically features a tendency to spread to
non-Islamist or non-Muslim parts of the world. But the way Erdogan
defends "conquest," even in the year 2016, looks just too ridiculous.

On June 4 Erdogan was addressing students at a theology faculty. In his speech he said:

"When we look at the way Islam has spread to the world we
see that it rather features the conquest of 'hearts' rather than
conquest by the 'sword'... Look, now there is the Islamophobia malady in
the West ... [Its] aim is to stop [the further spread of Islam]. But
they will not be able to succeed."

"Just like our [Turkish] arrival into Anatolia, just like
the conquest of Istanbul ... I know you will be behaving with the same
consciousness ... A 'New Turkey' will rise on your shoulders ... [to
succeed] you must reproduce. God [commands] you to have at least three
children."

It is amazing that Erdogan still has the power to shock -- in
absurdity -- even the most seasoned Erdogan observers. In his narrative,
Muslim Turks have never invaded foreign lands by the force of the
sword. What they did was just conquering hearts. This is not even funny.

And what about God's commandment for at least three children? There
is not a single verse in the Koran about the ideal size of a Muslim
family. There is not a single hadith that commands three, four or
no children, apart from a dubious source which quotes Prophet Mohammed
as advising Muslims that when the day of judgment has arrived, the ummah should be a large tribe.

On
June 4, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed university
students, saying, "Just like our [Turkish] arrival into Anatolia, just
like the conquest of Istanbul ... I know you will be behaving with the
same consciousness ... A 'New Turkey' will rise on your shoulders ...
You must reproduce. God [commands] you to have at least three children."

But things in Turkey are not progressing in the way Erdogan wishes.
Official figures show that Turkey faces the prospect of an aging
population. According to the government's statistics department, the fertility rate in Turkey fell
to 2.14 children per woman in 2015, from 2.37 in 2001. "Turkey is one
of the fastest aging countries in the world," says Didem Danis, an
academic. By 2023, 10.2% of the Turkish population will be made up of
people aged 65 years and over -- compared to 7.7% in 2013.

The Turks have never invaded foreign lands by the sword; Turkish
students of theology should prepare to conquer other lands; God commands
Muslims to have at least three children; and Turkey will rise to its
glorious Ottoman past thanks to a rapidly growing population... these
are the fairy tales from Erdoganistan.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8238/turkey-conquest-fetish Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Today, the property
left behind by Iraqi Jews upon immigrating to Israel or other countries
is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Humam Hamoudi, the
Iraqi parliament's first deputy speaker, recently said his country was
prepared to sue Israel for reparations for bombing the Osirak nuclear
reactor in 1981. A potential lawsuit is justified, according to Hamoudi,
because Israel recently marked the 35th anniversary of the military
operation. In other words, the "celebrations" were a public affront to
Iraqis and to Hamoudi himself.

Hamoudi's announcement
amazes me only because of its timing, which coincides with Israel's
recent commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the 1941 Farhud
massacre. In that massacre, hundreds of Muslim Iraqis raided Baghdad's
Jewish neighborhoods, murdering hundreds of Jews in cold blood and
stealing their property. To this day, Farhud survivors essentially
suffer from post-trauma. It is important to note that Iraqi Jews arrived
in Babylon before Islam did.

The assault on the Jews
of Iraq didn't end with Farhud; quite the opposite. From the
establishment of the State of Israel and throughout the entire 20th
century, Jews in Iraq were targeted. On March 15, 1951, Iraq introduced
racist anti-Jewish legislation. The most prominent of these laws called
for the national seizure of money and property belonging to thousands of
Jews. This law essentially led to the waves of immigration to Israel in
the 1950s -- beginning with Operation Ezra and Nehemiah in 1951 and
1952, which airlifted between 120,000 and 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel
-- following the Iraqi government's decision to allow Jews to leave the
country if they renounced their citizenship and surrendered their
property.

During the rule of the
Baath Party in 1968 to 1973, the remaining Jews in Iraq were harassed by
the authorities, which denied them freedom of movement and seized their
property. In 1969, some 50 Iraqi Jews were murdered in the Baghdad
hangings and in other incidents, which further accelerated Jewish
emigration.

Today, the property
left behind by Iraqi Jews upon immigrating to Israel or other countries
is estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Those Jews came to
this barren land as disinherited and downtrodden refugees, struggling
tooth and nail to forge lives for themselves out of nothing. The
majority of them integrated into society and contributed greatly to the
country. Others, having had their wealth and property stolen in Arab
lands, remained mired in multi-generational poverty. Hamoudi can choose
from among the aforementioned events how to balance out the money he
wants from Israel.

Israel needs to sue
Iraq for reparations, not just for the Farhud victims and their looted
property, but also for the damage caused by Saddam Hussein when he
bombarded Tel Aviv with Scud missiles in 1991. In addition, the issue of
property belonging to the Jewish communities of Iraq, Egypt and other
Arab countries needs to be put on the national agenda, especially as the
Saudi peace initiative is currently being discussed.

Dr. Edy Cohen is a research fellow at Bar-Ilan University.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16415 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The rich but unclaimed territory of the Arctic has been an
area of U.S.-Russian frictions and incidents that, in a post-Cold War
period, can escalate to the level of open conflict.

With
the NATO’s Warsaw summit less than a month ahead (July 8 and 9, 2016),
the U.S. must formulate a long-term strategy for counteracting Russia’s
Arctic military expansion that has been taking place for the last half a
century. The rich but unclaimed territory of the Arctic has been an
area of U.S.-Russian frictions and incidents that, in a post-Cold War
period, can escalate to the level of open conflict. The polar region
holds a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources,
with American waters covering about 27 billion barrels of oil and 132
trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to create jobs, revenues, and
heat for more than 30 years.

It
becomes more and more obvious that, in the current geopolitical
situation, Putin is not going anywhere. After all, he is now in his
juvenile low 60s, and he’s been around since 1999, as an on/off-off/on
prime minister and president (and the charade will go on and on). On the
other hand, Trump has a very good chance of becoming the next U.S.
president for the following four, or possibly eight, years. Let us not
forget that Putin has outlasted Clinton, at the end of his second
mandate, Bush, Jr., after his two mandates, and Obama, after his two
mandates. So, now we may very well prognosticate how the U.S.-Russia
relationship will look like in the next, say, 10 years or so. The reason
I am saying this is because I detect a sort of attunement between the
two world leaders, not because of the values they share (which, by the
way, are not the same, like many erroneously have characterized), but
rather for having a similar psychological pattern, both in texture and
design. They sound and act alike, in the sense that both of them are
undisputedly considered patriots (the political analysts would say
“populists”), and therefore, invested with a lot of confidence, trust,
and hope by their fellow citizens. Hence their constant high percentages
in polls.

The Arctic Players

The
region, located at the northernmost part of Earth, includes, in its
subarctic zone, the northern territories of Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States, but its arctic zone
is divided only amongst four players, alongside a 200-mile demarcation
line, with Russia on one side, and the United States, Canada, Denmark,
and Norway on the other. The increased Russian military presence in the
Arctic creates unease amongst these neighboring countries, especially
Norway, who has proven very active in promoting NATO’s role in the
Arctic, by backing the Western application of sanctions against Russia.

Russia’s “Northern Exposure”

In
the Putin era, Russia has taken several aggressive steps to mark its
territory by reactivating and renovating its older Soviet military
bases, in order to accommodate last generation defense systems
(including radar and ground guidance systems), fighter aircraft,
nuclear-powered icebreaker ships and submarines. It also has extended
motorized infantry brigades and border patrol guards (in the archipelago
of Novaya Zemlya, Murmansk and Yamal-Nenets regions, Franz Josef Land,
Wrangel Island and Cape Schmidt). In October 2013, Putin vowed never to
“surrender” Russia’s Arctic area. In October 2014, Russia announced its
intention to submit more requests to the United Nations, seeking to
expand its Arctic borders by 1.2 million square kilometers (more than
463,322 square miles). In November 2014, Putin announced to set up the
headquarters of a “North” Arctic Command, operational in December the
same year.

http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-arctic-expansion-2014-11 In
December 2015, Putin signed a new military doctrine, according to which
the Arctic was officially listed in the Russian sphere of influence.

The United States’ Response

Beginning
in 2013, the U.S. has developed a national strategy for the Arctic
region, consisting of more than 30 specific initiatives in an
implementation plan led by the Department of Homeland Security (and
supported by other agencies like Commerce, Defense, State,
Transportation, and National Science Foundation) “to project a sovereign
U.S. maritime presence, support U.S. interests in the polar Regions and
facilitate research that advances the fundamental understanding of the
Arctic” (see Ronald O’Rourke’s May 27, 2016 report, pp. 8-9).

But the United States has to take a more aggressive approach
toward Russia’s militarization of the Arctic. The U.S. Navy should
start building more polar icebreakers, in order to prepare for possible
Russian aggression. Traditionally, the regional Coast Guards in the area
was responsible for this task.

Currently, the U.S. polar icebreaking fleet includes two heavy endurance icebreakers (Polar Star,
under technical upgrading, and Polar Sea, operational, designed to
perform missions in both the Arctic and Antarctic), one medium endurance
icebreaker (Healy, used for scientific research in the Arctic), and one ship (Palmer, used for scientific research in the Antarctic). Plans have been made for five or six more
(two or three heavy and three medium) icebreakers, whereas the price
tag for one unit tops US$ 1 billion. By comparison, Russia has 41
icebreakers, and Canada has six (and is currently expanding).

Toward a New American Arctic Strategy

Building
and modernizing a new icebreaker fleet is only part of a more
comprehensive Arctic strategy, that the U.S. has to design and
implement. The American strategic interests in both polar regions
(especially in the bordering Arctic), must be redefined at a national
policy level. Therefore, the U.S. Arctic sector must be reconfigured.
The Russians have already taken steps in the United Nations in order to
expand their Arctic zone. We have to develop more Arctic military
locations: temporary stations and permanent bases alongside Alaska’s
coastal areas (Arctic and Pacific), and in the Aleutian archipelago (the
Bering Sea), the westernmost part of the U.S. by longitude, bordering
Russia (where the U.S. detonated the largest underground nuclear explosion, in 1971).

Also,
the United States should start a more intensive Arctic cooperation
policy (including implementing bases) with its northern allies: Denmark
(in Greenland), and Iceland.

Related
to Greenland, the U.S. have been always developing a special
geopolitical interest. Between 1941 and 1945 the island has been
occupied by the American military, as a response to Denmark being
invaded by Nazi Germany. In 1946, the U.S. offered to buy Greenland from Denmark, but the latter refused to sell it.

As for Iceland, the U.S. Naval Air Station at Keflavik, closed in September 2006, is scheduled to reopen,
almost ten years after the last forces left the country, due to the
local authorities’ concern with the recent Russian activities.

In
addition to that, the U.S. should strengthen both NATO and bilateral
cooperation with Canada and Norway, and extend a military partnership
with the other non-NATO Scandinavian allies (Finland and Sweden).

Thus,
an efficient American Arctic strategy would imply a binary component
system, with micro (the technical and logistical support) and macro
elements (the military arch of Arctic allies). Therefore, the United
States should start updating and expanding the micro (where Russia is
dominating now), in consonance with solidifying and extending the macro
(where Russia is and will always be a solo player, and consequently, on
its own, due to an absence of Arctic allies).

Tiberiu Dianu is a scholar and author of several books and articles in law and
post-communist societies. He studied law, human rights, and criminal
justice at the universities of Bucharest (Romania), Strasbourg (France),
Oxford and Manchester (U.K.), American University (in Washington, DC),
and University of Maryland at College Park (in Maryland). He currently
lives in Washington, DC and works for various government and private
agencies. Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/russias_arctic_expansionism_how_should_the_us_respond.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Palestinian leaders have
repeatedly shown that their priority is not peace, or a two-state
solution, or a Palestinian state, but repression.

If a Palestinian state is created without correcting these
destructive practices, it is highly likely that the new Palestinian
regime will follow the same pattern already established, and be a
hatemongering, corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, belligerent, and
ineffective regime. This would not only be a security threat for Israel,
it would mean more of the same for the Palestinians.

France, with the support
of the United States, is leading a new attempt at peace between Israel
and the Palestinians, with the implied goal that an independent
Palestinian state would be created -- but what should we expect from
such a state?

Although past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior,
it is a strong indicator of it, especially if no corrective action has
been taken.

Violence

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared,
"The dawn of freedom rises with the evacuation of the last Israeli
soldier and settler." Yet, instead of using that freedom to build a
successful economy, Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses
that the settlers had left, and terrorists launched rocket attacks
against Israel. These attacks forced Israel to institute a naval
blockade of Gaza, to limit the supply of weapons to terrorists.

The Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s
provided a transition period meant to lead to Palestinian statehood.
However, instead of peaceful coexistence with Israel, the Palestinian
leadership launched an assault that became known as the Second Intifada.

During the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Abbas declared, "Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it's for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah's will."

These violent actions and the incitement are not exceptions. They are part of a pattern of Arab denial of the Jews' right to exist,
which started well before Israel declared its independence, and that
caused several wars and innumerable terrorist attacks against Israel.

Lack of democracy

Palestinian democracy has so far been a failure. Yasser Arafat was
elected in July 1994 as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for a
four-year term, but he stayed in power, without further elections, for
more than 10 years until his death in November 2004. Mahmoud Abbas was
elected President in May 2005, and is still in office, without further
elections, eleven years later.

Hamas, which won the PA legislative elections of 2006, was never
invited to take the PA reins of power, but it took control of the Gaza
Strip through a violent overthrow of Fatah, and still controls Gaza --
also without further elections -- ten years later.

Fatah and Hamas have used elections to create a semblance of
democracy, and both have abused their authority to go far beyond their
legitimate mandates. Both routinely use control of the media, control of the education system, and violence to maintain their power, as documented extensively by Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.

Hamas
leader Ismail Haniyeh (left) and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas (also
president of the Palestinian Authority) are pictured voting in the last
election for the Palestinian Legislative Council, which took place in
2006.

Corruption

As reported by CBS News
in 2003, "Yasser Arafat diverted nearly $1 billion in public funds to
insure his political survival, but a lot more is unaccounted for."

Abbas has continued the tradition. Haaretz reported
that the Panama Papers "show that Tareq Abbas, the son of Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, held shares worth nearly $1 million
in a company associated with the PA".

Khaled Abu Toameh has written
that, "$4.5 billion the Americans invested in promoting Palestinian
democracy went down the drain or ended up in secret Swiss bank
accounts."

Hamas, which was elected partly in opposition to Fatah corruption, is just as corrupt. Moshe Elad wrote
in Tablet Magazine that the Hamas government, "is centralized and
corrupt, it lacks effectiveness, bribery plays a very important role in
society, and nepotism is prevalent, with just few families or relatives
benefiting from state monopolies on basic services and commodities".

Associated Press reported
that 95.5% of Palestinians in the West Bank believe that the PA is
corrupt while 82% of Palestinians in Gaza believe that Hamas is corrupt.

Promotion of hatred

As noted previously,
promotion of hatred by Palestinian leaders is widespread, and it is the
main obstacle to peaceful co-existence with Israel. An example of
Palestinian hate propaganda is a made-for-children movie where, as reported by London's Daily Mail,

"The little girl, dressed in a hijab, is seen pretending
to stab two boys dressed as Israeli soldiers, who respond by 'shooting'
her. Then, amid cheers from the baying crowd, a boy dressed as a masked
terrorist massacres the soldiers with a replica semi-automatic weapon."

The newspaper added that the video was filmed at a "festival of
hate," which was partly funded by a UK charity supported by British
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and some other Labor MPs.

Oppression of the Palestinian people

Both Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza run their governments
as dictatorships, where freedom of speech is denied and where dissent is
punished by jail, beatings, torture, or death. This retribution is
widely recognized, even by organizations that are often considered
biased against Israel, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty
International (AI).

In 2011, in a 35-page report, HRW documented
"cases in which security forces tortured, beat, and arbitrarily
detained journalists, confiscated their equipment, and barred them from
leaving the West Bank and Gaza."

"The Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the
Hamas de facto administration in the Gaza Strip both restricted freedom
of expression, including by arresting and detaining critics and
political opponents. They also restricted the right to peaceful assembly
and used excessive force to disperse some protests. Torture and other
ill-treatment of detainees remained common in both Gaza and the West
Bank."

Lack of economic drive

Palestinian leaders have concentrated all their efforts on waging war
against Israel and increasing their own personal wealth. The best
economic opportunities presented to average West Bank Palestinians are
in working on settlement construction or commuting daily to jobs in
Israel.

The lack of Palestinian economic development in the West Bank is
often blamed on Israel, yet when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip,
Palestinian leaders did not seize that opportunity to build the economy
of Gaza. They chose instead to spend their resources on rockets, terror
tunnels, and enriching the leaders of Hamas.

Bad behavior is rewarded

Those who provide funding to the Palestinians are aware of this
behavior, yet they have not used their influence to curb it. In fact,
they reward it.

The Palestinian leadership in Gaza is rewarded for every war it
initiates with Israel in two ways. During the war, it is rewarded by the
international media, which provides wide coverage of Palestinian
casualties while ignoring the terrorist actions that led to those
casualties (thus playing into Hamas's "dead baby strategy").
After the war, Gaza's leadership is rewarded when more funding is
provided for reconstruction, despite the knowledge that a large portion
of it is used to rebuild the terrorist arsenal.

The Fatah/Palestinian Authority leadership in the West Bank is
rewarded by international donors who provide ongoing funding to
President Mahmoud Abbas while knowing the extent of the corruption of his regime and its lack of democracy.

Realism

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly shown that their priority is not
peace, or a two-state solution, or a Palestinian state, but repression.
If a Palestinian state is created without correcting these destructive
practices, it is highly likely that the new Palestinian regime will
follow the same pattern already established, and be a hatemongering,
corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, belligerent, and ineffective regime.
This would not only be a security threat for Israel, it would mean more
of the same for the Palestinians.

Current talk by Western leaders of peace, a two-state solution, and a
Palestinian state makes no mention of these dangers. If those leaders
wish to achieve a lasting peace that is beneficial to Israel and the
Palestinians, rather than to create an unstable situation and could
cause irreparable damage to both sides, peace discussions must account
for the Palestinian reality.

Fred Maroun a left-leaning Arab based in Canada, has
authored op-eds for New Canadian Media, among other outlets. From
1961-1984, he lived in Lebanon.Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8176/independent-palestinian-state Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.